Crecy campaign

The Crecy campaign was a large-scale chevauchee raid conducted by the English army of King Edward III of England throughout northern France from July 1346 to August 1347 at the start of the Hundred Years' War. The English devastated Normandy, stormed and sacked Caen, raided from Rouen to Poissy on the left bank of the Seine, destroyed a French army at the Battle of Crecy, and captured Caen in 1347. The Crecy campaign led to the signing of a truce at Calais on 7 July 1348.

Background
At the start of the Hundred Years' War in May 1337, England's only territorial possessions in France were Gascony in southwestern France and Ponthieu in the north. France had three times the population of Medieval England, and England also had a smaller army, less land, and had to send reinforcements across the English Channel to assist in the defense of its French possessions. It was not until 1345 that King Edward III of England decided to mount an all-out offensive against France: William, Earl of Northampton would invade Brittany, Henry, Earl of Derby would sail to protect Gascony, and Edward would invade France via Flanders. In July 1345, however, a storm scattered Edward's fleet off Sluys and forced it to return to England. Meanwhile, King Philip VI of France dispatched reinforcements to Brittany and Gascony. Derby defeated two large French armies at Bergerac and Auberoche in Gascony, and he captured much of Perigord and Agenais. Late in the year, he took Aiguillon. The third pincer under Northampton was recalled after a futile attempt at conquering Brittany. In March 1346, the tide turned in Gascony as a 20,000-strong French field army, bringing siege engines with it, laid siege to Derby at Aiguillon Castle. Derby, who had recently become Duke of Lancaster, sent an urgent appeal for help to his cousin, King Edward, who was obliged by indenture to come to his cousin's aid. Edward gave orders for full preparations to be made for a relief expedition to Gascony, mobilizing men from his own kingdom and engaging mercenaries in other countries where they could be found. At the same time, Sir Godfrey de Harcourt, who had been banished from France, went to meet with the King and Queen of England at Chertsey, 15 miles from London, and he was made a member of the King's household and council.

In midsummer 1346, King Edward left the Queen in the care of his cousin, the Earl of Kent, and he appointed Lords Percy and Neville to be guardians of his kingdom (together with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishops of Lincoln and Durham) and then rode down to Southampton to embark on the invasion. King Edward, his son Prince Edward the Black Prince, Sir Godfrey de Harcourt, and the other lords, earls, and barons, together with 4,000 men-at-arms, 10,000 archers, and the Irish and Welsh who followed the English on foot, set sail for Gascony. On the third day, the wind changed and drove them back to the coasts of Cornwall, where they remained anchored for six days. Godfrey advised King Edward to invade via Normandy instead, promising him that it would be easy to remain there, that the inexperienced inhabitants would offer no resistance, and that the cream of the Norman knights were at the siege of Aiguillon with the Duke (large towns and fortresses would be completely undefended). The King agreed with Godfrey, and the English made landfall on the Cotentin Peninsula at Saint-Vaast-la-Hogue on 12 July.

Norman chevauchee
King Philip discovered that the English had landed at Normandy, upon which he summoned his commander-in-chief (the Count of Guines) and Count de Tancarville and ordered them to defend Caen and its approaches against the English. They left Paris with a large force of men-at-arms, and their ranks were constantly swollen with new arrivals. The people of Caen and the refugees from the nearby countryside cheerfully greeted them, and the inhabitants were armed and equipped each according to his standing; the town, which had yet to be fortified, was put in a state of defense.

King Edward appointed Sir Godfrey and the Earl of Warwick to be his marshals, with the Earl of Arundel as commander-in-chief and the Earl of Huntingdon as commander of 100 men-at-arms and 400 archers sent to defend the fleet. At a second council, the army was divided into three columns, with the right flank following the coast. While the English army fanned out, the fleet sailed along the coast and seized every vessel that they fell in with. The English archers and foot-soldiers marched near them within sight of the sea, pillaging everything that they came across. The fortified seaport of Barfleur surrendered without a fight in the hope of eniency, but the town was emptied of its gold, silver, and jewelry by the English. All men in the town were imprisoned on the English ships lest they rally afterwards and rebel against the English. The English then spread across the country without resistance, sacking and burning part of the large wealthy seaport Cherbourg and ignoring the strongly-defended citadel. They then went on towards Montbourg and Valogne, and they completely sacked and burned Valogne. Continuing from Valogne, the Earl of Warwick's column took and sacked the fortified town of Carentan. The other two columns met with similar success, amassing huge quantities of plunder in the form of household possessions and the livestock in which Normandy abounded.

King Philip's response
King Philip swore that the English invaders would have to be brought to battle and meant to pay dearly for the destruction of his lands, and he summoned his friends in the Holy Roman Empire (King John of Bohemia and his son Charles of Bohemia, the self-proclaimed King of Germany), the Duke of Lorraine (who brought over 400 lancers), the Counts of Salm, Saarbruck, Flanders, and Namur, Sir John of Hainault (who had recently become a French ally thorugh his son-in-law Count Louis II of Blois),and many others. The King summoned fighting men from every possible quarter and assembled one of the largest forces of great lords, dukes, counts, barons, and knights that had been seen in France for 100 years. While King Philip awaited the assembly of his army, the English devastated the whole of the Cotentin and Normandy. The inhabitants, who had never experienced war, fled at the mere mention of the English, leaving their houses and barns filled with provisions for the taking. The army found every supply they needed except wine, although they had reasonable stocks of it. They then captured Saint-Lo, where they acquired such quantities of cloth that they would have let it go cheap if they had anyone to sell it to.

Sack of Caen
When the English left Saint-Lo, they marrched on the wealthy city of Caen. The city castle's captain was the Norman knight Robert de Wargnies, who commanded a garrison of 300 Genoese. The Count of Eu and Guines and the Count of Tancarville defended the town itself, and the English fleet came to the port of Ouistreham (six miles from Caen on the River Orne) as the English army encamped in open country five miles from the town. The next morning, the English assaulted the city. They suffered heavy losses in the process, with several hundreds of English soldiers being killed and injured when some of the city dwellers threw stones, beams, and masonry on the English from the garrets overhanging the narrow streats. The King was dissuaded from massacring the entire population, and he instead forbade his soldiers from starting a fire, killing a man, or raping a woman; however, there were still many cases of murder, pillages, arson, and robbery. The English fleet was then sent back to England with the loot from Caen, and the King of England sent more than 60 knights and 300 wealthy citizens back to England as prisoners.

Blanchetaque
The English then ravaged the country west of the Seine, but without attacking the fortified places; they followed the left bank as far as Poissy, 20 miles from Paris. When the English found all the bridges over the Seine destroyed, they decided to turn back after five days of waiting. His Marshals made forays to nearby Saint-Germain-en-Laye, La Montjoie, Saint-Cloud, Boulogne, and Bourg-le-Reine, burning the towns and alarming the residents of the unfortified city of Paris. King Philip abandoned the city, preparing to leave for Saint-Denis to rendezvous with his barons and knights. The English withdrawal enabled King Philip to rally his army and pursue the English army. At Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, there was a sharp skirmish between the French and English. The French prisoner Gobin Agace told the English of a ford at La Blanchetaque, and the English crossed the ford and continued their retreat. Sir Godemar I du Fay and his Franco-Genoese army blocked the river crossing, and the ensuing Battle of Blanchetaque saw the English defeat the French, ford the river, pursue and slaughter the French for three miles, and evade Philip's approaching army. Philip was forced to halt his pursuit and wait for the river's tide to halt.

Crecy
The English halted their advance at La Broye while the Marshals burned the coastal town of Crotoy to the ground, capturing a number of Poitou ships and barges filled with wine belonging to merchants from Saintonge and La Rochelle. The next day, the King moved towards Crecy in Ponthieu, and the Marshals proceeded to devastate the land between Abbeville and Saint-Riquier. King Edward decided to fight the pursuing French at the advantageous hillsides near Crecy, and, on 26 August 1346, the 20,000-strong English army under King Edward met the 60,000-strong French army under King Philip in battle. The ensuing Battle of Crecy was a miraculous victory for the English, whose longbowmen inflicted heavy losses on the uncoordinated French knights as they attempted to charge uphill on muddy ground; when the French made contact with the English archers, the English footsoldiers counterattacked and massacred the French. 4,000 French nobles, including Charles II de Alencon, Rudolph of Lorraine, Louis II of Blois, and John of Bohemia, were killed in the great battle, and King Philip was wounded and forced to flee. The slaughter was so great that Welsh and Cornish pillagers and irregulars in the English army used their long knives to massacre the wounded counts, barons, knights, and squires, angering King Edward, who sought to capture and ransom them. The French army was routed, and King Edward praised his 16-year-old son, Edward the Black Prince, for leading the longbowmen to victory against all odds. On the next day, Sunday, the English proceeded to massacre levies from French cities and towns who belatedly arrived at Crecy, unaware of the battle; 7,000 Frenchmen from Rouen and Beauvais were slaughtered in one engagement, while the Archbishop of Rouen and the Grand Prior of France were slain in a separate battle.The number of the French soldiesr killed on Sunday morning was over four times greater than the number who had died at the main battle of Crecy the day before. King edward then sent Reginald Cobham and Richard Stafford to identify the dead by their arms, and they found eleven dead princes, eighty bannerets, 1,200 ordinary knights, and about 30,000 other men. On Monday, Edward III had the bodies of the nobles buried at the church at Maintenay, and he allowed for the locals to bury the other dead over the course of three days. Edward then made for Montreuil-sur-Mer as his marshals went towards Hesdin and burnt Waben and Beaurain, ignoring the castle at the latter town. On the way to Boulogne, they also burnt Saint-Josse, Neufchatel, Etaples, and Rue and the country around Boulogne. They then found the large town of Wissant, where Edward and his army took up their quarters and rested for one day. On Thursday, the English set out to capture the fortified town of Calais, their main objective in northern France.